APPENDIX TO THE THEORY

I have a neat medical trick you can try at home. You will need to take off your shirt, and have a mirror and a marking pen at the ready. What you are first looking for is your hipbone. If you are an old fart like me, with 60 some years of subcutaneous fat accumulated, gently press in on the right front corner of your waist until you feel a sharp hard bone.  This is your hip and is called your illiac crest, and the most forward part of that is your anterior superior illiac crest. Mark this with a dot. 

Now find your belly button. Mark that with a dot, and try not to giggle while doing so. Now connect the dots with a straight line. Two thirds of the way down that line from your belly button is your McBurney's Tender Point. And directly beneath your McBurney's Point is your appendix. Ta Da!

This magical location was discovered by Dr. Charles Herber McBurney (above).  And because he was a surgeon, Doctor McBurney's only interest in the appendix was in cutting it out. This was not easy, because between your magic marker and your appendix are your abdominal muscles. Slicing willy-nilly through these could make it very hard to continue breathing, which is very bad. But then if your appendix bursts open, that is also very bad. 

It was Dr. McBurney  (above, center) who developed the life saving operation called an appendectomy, during which an appendix is safely removed. The procedure has become so standard that some people have their appendix taken out in advance, even though only 10% of the population ever develops appendicitis. “Better safe than sorry” is their motto. However the second most important motto in medicine should always be, “Not so fast.”

The proper name for this 4 inch long unprepossessing organ is the vermiform appendix, which means “a worm-shaped" organ (center), "...a blind pouch near the beginning of the large intestine".  And humans aren't the only creatures with one. 

Reptiles, birds, marsupials and mammals all share this structure, even some gastropods, but no fish, and very few creatures without backbones. Most are vegetarians, which has inspired human vegetarians to celebrate the appendix as a vestige of their vegetarian ancestors. Unfortunately, it turns out, it isn't. In the first place most animals are vegetarians, but in true vegetarians the appendix is large.  In humans it's so small it seems like an after thought, an appendix to the main digestive story.

The human appendix juts just below the junction of the large and the small intestine. But it appears to be an  empty sack that leads no where, inspiring Mark Twain to observe, “Its sole interest is to lie and wait for stray grape-seeds and breed trouble.”  

The trouble arrives with an infection, when the appendix swells up and bursts, spilling nasty bacteria all over your nice clean abdominal cavity. If you have a fever and are feeling a pain in your middle, find your McBurney's point and press down with one finger. If that causes excruciating pain, you are the unfortunate owner of a burst appendix, and you have a few hours to have it removed and your system flushed with antibiotics. Other wise, you are dead.

So here is this small, squishy sack, not much bigger than your index finger, that isn't connected to anything but your intestines, doesn't seem to produce anything, and you don't seem to miss it much when it's gone and occasionally it tries to kill you. Humans can be forgiving for thinking it was pretty much useless, like the last three vertebrae of your spine, all that is left of our once magnificent prehensile tails, reduced in modern humans to helping you balance when sitting on your butt.  What good is an appendix?. For the last hundred years, the opinion of the medical community was almost universal, echoed by the authors of the medical textbook, “The Vertebrate Body”, “Its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession.”: written like a true diagnostician.

There is one hint about what the appendix might be doing, in that when you look at it in place it doesn't look like its neighbors, even when inflamed and surrounded by puss (above). Where the intestines are various shades of red, pink and purple, the appendix is white, and this is clue that it is made up of lymphatic tissue, Latin for “connected to water”. The most common member of this variety of cells, lymphocytes, are also known as white blood cells.  Their job is to identify invaders floating in our blood stream, and swallow them. So any lymphatic tissue, like that found in the appendix, must be concerned with defense: right?. But the appendix has only a tiny opening connecting it with the intestines, and a healthy appendix contains no bacteria that are not also present in the intestines. What could it be doing, if anything?

Well, it must be doing something, since the latest evolutionary genetic research indicates it has been invented at least 30 separate times in history. And then about a decade ago it was discovered that lymphocytes also raise the “PH” level in your intestines, thus encouraging reproduction and increase of the 700 or so different species of “friendly” bacteria that we require to digest our food.

See, the healthy human gut is acidic - the small intestines have a PH factor of 6.8. This will not burn through steel, but the 10 trillion Prevotella, Bacteroides and Ruminococcus bacteria (amongst others) in your gut, require that acidity to thrive. They break the proteins and sugars that pass through your intestines into smaller molecules, and those are then filtered into the blood stream. An invasion of “bad bugs” reduces the acid level. That's why those bugs are bad. And you know the bad bugs outnumber the good ones in your gut when you get diarrhea. In other words you are not what you eat, but what you digest. Now, eventually your lymphocytes will eat the invaders in your blood stream, and the diarrhea will flush them out of your intestines. But how do you replace the good bugs the bad bugs have murdered?

Well, according to Pediatrician Indi Trehan, at Washington University in St. Louis, that's where the lowly appendix comes into play. “The appendix has a unique anatomical location that is out of the way. Bacteria can be kept safe there for repopulating as needed,” he says. In other words, the appendix is a biological panic room. It keeps the good guys nice and safe, warm and happy, acidic and reproductive, even when your waiter forgets to wash his hands, or the tuna fish in the refrigerator goes bad, or the three bean salad is left out on the picnic table in the sun. It is in fact a validation of the theory of evolution- the use of available material to preform new functions.

Charles Darwin thought the appendix was vestigial, like your tail bone. He was wrong. Given the information available to us, he would have realized he was wrong. But its role as a panic room in the gut, and its construction from cells that had been evolved for other uses, and that it was re-invented over and over in species with and without placentas, (mammals and marsupials) is proof of Darwin's  fundamental idea of evolution. And so are the 10 trillion bacteria in your gut at this moment happily chomping away at your food, just like the bacteria in the gut of every living thing, from mosquitoes to elephants, even those without an appendix. .

This new view of the human vermiform appendix as a panic room, has supported a rethinking of Dr. McBurney's approach to an inflamed appendix. Increasingly patients with inflamed appendixes  are being admitted to hospitals, not for surgery, but for a heavy course of IV antibiotics. And as long as the appendix has not yet burst, usually, this works. It is cheaper and safer for the patient, and easier on the doctors, as it cuts down (pardon the pun) on panic surgeries. And it also makes the 10% of Christian Scientist with appendicitis,  happier as well.

I'm not sure what the “homeschooled” children of fundamentalist will do about all of this, the next time one of them has a pain in their gut. If, to quote Georgia Congressman Paul Broun, who is a medical doctor, the theory of evolution is a lie, “straight from the pit of hell”, then why would an IV course of antibiotics calm an inflamed appendix, irregardless of the state of grace of the owner of the appendix or the doctors, or the nurse who hangs the IV bag? I've said it before and I will say it again here; belief in an almighty God does not require stupidity, no matter how many stupid people say otherwise. Evidently it doesn't hurt, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement.

                                                                           - 30 - 

NOT A PERFECT UNION

 

I was surprised to find how many of America's 18 million citizens on Thursday 10 September, 1846, who were collectively on a journey to our “more perfect union”,  were on person journeys as well.  In the dry Nevada scrub lands,  members of the Donner Party, the last California emigrant train of the season, awoke to see the error of their ways in the snow capped Ruby Mountains (above). 

On that same day, out on the Great Plains, exhausted Mormons escaping religious persecution awoke to a violent downpour, and the commandment to rise from their sickbeds and retrace their steps. Sixty miles south of the Rio Grande River, an American invasion force was preparing to fall on the ill prepared Mexican city of Monterrey. While, at the center of this web of worry and hope, susceptible to each distant tug and pull, a 38 year old alcoholic was being chased by the shadows thrown up by a flickering whale oil lamp in a Washington, D.C. hotel room.

On Pennsylvania Avenue, at the foot of Capital Hill,   and a few steps from the fetid Washington Canal, stood the three story wood frame St. Charles Hotel (above) - soon to be renamed the Capital Hotel. The establishment catered to southerners, boasting a basement room where slaves could be restrained so securely the management offered to reimburse masters should their property escape. One of the most popular resident guests was the congressman from Alabama's 7^th district, Felix G. McConnell. He was known for his biting humor, his spendthrift ways and his voluminous drinking. And this night he had reached the end of a hundred dollar drunk.

Tales of 38 year old McConnell's impromptu inebriated parties were legendary. During his first term, after inviting the occupants of the bar at the upscale Brown's Hotel to “Come up and licker'”, he was confronted by the scrupulously proper John W. Dade, superintendent of the District's jails. Dade himself had also obviously been drinking for hours, and pompously inquired, “With whom have I the honor of drinking?” McConnell gave his stump speech reply. “"My name is Felix Grundy McConnell, Egad! I am a member of Congress from Alabama. My mother is a justice of the peace, my aunt keeps a livery stable, and my grandmother commanded a company in the Revolution and fit the British, gol darn their souls!” “Old Jack” Dade formally replied “Sir, I am a man of high aspirations and peregrinations and can have nothing to do with such low-down scopangers as yourself. Good morning, sir!” That having been said Dade stayed to drink with McConnell, and the two became fast friends.

But perhaps McConnell's most famous moment of public excess had come at a performance of “The Nordic Paganini”, Old Bull - Ole Bornemann Bull, the Norwegian solo violinists (above) who was on his first American tour. The New York Herald reported, “At the close of some of his wonderful cadences, the very musicians in the orchestra flung down their instruments and stamped and applauded like madmen.” The same critic went on to suggest the “Prince of Violinists” drew up to 4,000 people to his concerts because his “...pyrotechnic style and dramatic manner...captivated the musically uninitiated...”

Ole's bigger than life personality went over well in America.  And he “could talk politics with even more earnestness and force than he could talk music.” All in all he seemed another natural friend for Congressman McConnell, except Ole was a tea totaler.

Ole played four concerts over the holidays in 1843, and in the midst of the Christmas Eve performance in Washington, D.C., a drunken Congressman McConnell suddenly rose and shouted, “None of your high-falutin, but give us ‘Hail Columbia’ and bear hard on the treble’! “ As a music critic noted, people shouted, “"Throw him out!” So they did. But the policemen had their hands full, for McConnell was a husky chap, and full of spirituous encouragement...”, and the officers had to resort to their night sticks. But given that most of the audience was not there for the music but for the show, it was not a significant interruption. Briefly McConnell was charged with “rioting and disturbance”, before his high office and high powered friends saw the charges dismissed.

In his two terms in Congress, McConnell sponsored just two pieces of legislation. In his first term he introduce a bill to annex Ireland. The bill was just a jibe at northern Democrats who insensitively opposed the annexation of Texas, but who were sensitive to the fastest growing immigrant population in America - the Irish.  Having made his joke, Felix McConnell allowed the Ireland annexation bill to quietly die. But at the beginning of his second term, he touched on something much closer to his heart.

On 9 March, 1846, just five days into the 29^th Congress, McConnell introduced “A Bill to grant to the Head of a Family, Man, Maid or Widow, a Homestead not exceeding 160 acres of Land”. It was the first “Homestead Bill” introduced in the United States Capital (above). It's purpose was to democratize the frontier.

Since before the revolution money men had been bought up every tract of public land offered for sale, looking to profit by reselling it to other investors, as if it were stock in a company.  Land speculation fever was so powerful, most investors eagerly went into debt to obtain as much land as possible, intending to sell it again before their note became due. Like Russian roulette, this game could end in only one way.

The speculator would  do a hasty survey,  subdivide the land and then sell the sub-divisions to poorer speculators, who would subdivide the subdivision, and so on and so on until the most desperate and most financially strapped investors,  would borrow enough to by 40 acres and then plant crops.

By the time an actual farmer obtained a small tract,  the price was so inflated as to leave him deeply in debt. And the first bad year, the first crop failure, the farmers would be unable to meet their interest payments on the loans. The farmers would then "pull up stakes”, abandon the farm and the loan and move further west to repeat the process. Thus the land would revert to the last owner, who would then resell to the next sucker. It was a very profitable business model, and reminds me of the current student loan system. But like the current for-profit college scams, it did not broaden the tax base, nor fund community improvements, like schools, roads or canals. It only made the wealthy, richer still.

McConnell was far from alone even among southern Democrats seeking to break up this monopoly on land and money. Sam Huston from Texas wanted a homestead act. Andrew Johnson from Tennessee introduced his own version the same day as McConnell. But these southern progressives were being replaced by well funded, increasingly rabid pro-slavery politicians, who saw individual homesteaders as a block to the next generation of big slave plantations, and big money land speculators.  Wrote one historian, “In spite of the undoubted earnestness of (McConnell), the bill seems to have been regarded as a jest...(and did not) elicit a respectful hearing from his fellow congressmen.” Andrew Johnson's almost duplicate bill was given a respectful hearing - before it was killed in committee.

It was the disrespect that seems to have broken Congressman McConnell's heart. Despite his reputation as a “dare-devil and a spendthrift”, McConnell was devoted to his job, missing just 8% of his floor votes in 1846, well below the average. Perhaps if he had not left his wife Elizabeth and their three children back in Alabama, he would not have turned to drink in Washington. Perhaps if he had chosen to stay in a less expensive boarding house, where he could share meals and companionship with his colleges, as opposed to a $65 a month room at the St. Charles - perhaps things would have turned out differently for him. Except his father Perry had died at 52, also addicted to “ardent spirits”. And now it seemed, every one had judged the young lawyer from Talladega as a joke and a drunk.

On the evening of 13 May 1846, the House of Representatives voted to go to war with Mexico – 174 to 14. The war had been sparked by the annexation of Texas by the United States, and was intended to help build a southern slave empire from Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia through Texas to California. Congressman McConnell voted with the majority for the war, but he knew, as did many other practical southerners, that the Mexican War led the south further under the control of firebrands and hot heads, determined to extend slavery at all costs.

On Tuesday, 8 September, 1846,  McConnell went to visit the man who had given him his first job, as a Tennessee postmaster. President James K. Polk was surprised to see him, thinking McConnell had gone home to Alabama during the recess. In his meticulous diary Polk noted, “he looked ...as though he had just recovered from a fit of intoxication. He was sober, but was pale, his countenance haggard and his system nervous. He applied to me to borrow one hundred dollars (to clear up his debts) and said he would return it to me in ten days....I had known him in his youth and had not the moral courage to refuse. I gave him the one hundred dollars in gold and took his note. His hand was so tremulous that he could scarcely write his name to the note legibly. I think it probable that he will never pay me.”

Leaving the White House, McConnell settled his bill with the hackman (taxi driver), and disappeared. Where he was Tuesday night and all of Wednesday, no one could say. But early in the afternoon of Thursday, 10 September, 1846, McConnell appeared in the bar of the St. Charles, inviting the few patrons to “Come up and licker”. He kept clicking gold coins between his fingers, and telling everyone he had been given them by President Polk. He even loaned the barkeep $35, although the man may have simply been trying to take the money out of McConnell's pocket before he drank himself to death. As evening approached the Congressman asked for a pen and paper, and struggled to compose a note. But after some time he gave up, rose and said he was going to his room.

Once behind his the locked door, McConnell lay upon the bed, and taking a “hawkbill knife” (above), stabbed himself several times in the abdomen. And when that proved ineffective, he slashed his own throat, twice. A short time later, someone was concerned enough to check in on the Congressman. Receiving  no reply to a knock, a pass key opened the room, and Felix Grundy McConnell was discovered atop a blood soaked mattress.

A Washington newspaper said, “No doubt can be entertained that Mr. McConnell committed the act in a state of mental hallucination – most probably under the influence of delirium tremens, brought on by the intemperate course of his life.” According to the Baltimore Sun, “His friends say that for about a week past he had relinquished drinking, owing to indisposition, and that the absence of his usual stimulus caused great despondency...he had his watch and valuable jewelry on his person, besides a sum of money.” President Polk added to his diary, “A jury of inquest was held and found a verdict that he had destroyed himself. It was a melancholy instance of the effects of intemperance...he was a true Democrat and a trusted friend".

Having been thus safely categorized and dismissed as an alcoholic and a jokester, Felix Grundy McConnell was buried in the Congressional Cemetery. Other than an occasional mention of his bill to annex Ireland, he was almost immediately forgotten. It was easier that way, to forget that he and other southerners, had once attempted to change the economics of the nation in a way that might have made the civil war unnecessary, that might have saved both of his sons, one born after his death, from having to fight in a war which cost the state of Alabama almost 40% of its population, men, women and children, black and white, wise, foolish, saint, sinner, alcoholic and tea-totaler.

God bless Felix Grundy McConnell, for his journey. He did his best to guide the people of Alabama and the nation to a “more perfect union”.  He tried to lead them down a path to avoid war.  And if others did not notice his effort, that was their loss. And if he stumbled on the path, that was to be expected. In this journey we all take, failure is inevitable. That is what makes success so sweet. That is why the journey must be made every day, to a “more perfect union”. Not perfect, just more perfect. And that was Felix Grundy McConnell – not perfect. Like the rest of us.

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OH, NO YOU DON'T

I was doing 70 miles per hour, speeding north out of Los Angeles on the 5 freeway on a typical Southern California morning during the 1990's. Suddenly, a flash of silver in the cloudless sky caught my attention. Then, there was nothing but the pale California blue. Then it flashed again, and again. And just as I started to ponder what it might be, the flashing stopped. Three hours later when I got home the first thing I told my girlfriend  now my wife,  Samantha, was I had seen a UFO. 

Now, any object you see in the sky which you cannot identify is by definition, an Unidentified Flying Object. And I had seen one.  But what I had not seen was a flying saucer, as in something built by aliens to visit our world.  

While watching the ten o'clock news my UFO was identified as a small home-built experimental “light” aircraft, flying out of Whiteman Airport, in Pacoma (above).  The engine had suddenly quit, and the plane had spiraled into the ground, sadly, killing the pilot. And with this knowledge, I realized every time the spinning plane's wings caught the light, they flashed in my direction, otherwise the plane was too small and too far away for me to have seen it. 

But what were the odds that I would have been in the exact position and looking in the exact direction to see that plane during the 20 seconds it took to fall three thousand feet? My sighting of that UFO was an extremely unlikely event, but far more likely than an alien spaceship visiting the earth. 

Twenty percent of Americans expect aliens to first land in Washington, D.C., which means that 20% of Americans are, in my opinion, too stupid to find their own feet in the dark. About one in three Americans believe flying saucers are alien visitors.  Barely two in ten are brave enough to assert unequivocally that UFO's are not alien spacecraft. I say all of this not because I believe I am right, but because I know I am. 

Just to leave the earth you have to be going 25,000 miles an hour, which is a very expensive and complicated thing to do.  And if you should see a rocket from an odd angle or at an odd time of day (above), it may look nothing like a televised launch. Being humans, with brains designed to make "sense" of what we see, connecting what we see with what we expect to see, with what we have seen before, it becomes easy to see something that is not what we think it is.

In one of the first UFO sightings, in 1947, over Seattle Washington, an experienced private pilot reported a formation of UFOs that raced away from him,  climbing and diving in defiance of gravity, while maintaining perfect formation. Since no one else saw the "aliens" the report can never be absolutely confirmed or absolutely denied. But a recreation by the PBS program NOVA showed the UFO's could have simply been sunlight reflections on the airplane's canopy.  I can't prove that is was reflections. But ask yourself,  what is more likely - aliens or a simple mistaken assumption when seeing something the pilot did not expect to see when and where he did not expect to see it?  Do you want to panic? Then it was aliens. If you prefer not to panic, then it probably wasn't, and life goes on. It's your choice

Also, consider this;   as difficult as it is to go 7 miles a minute just to get off this rock, in terms of space travel, escape velocity  is like backing out of your driveway. 

From the earth to the sun (called an Astronomical Unit) is 93 million miles. It would take 176 years to drive to the sun in a Chevette at 70 miles an hour, and you would need special glasses. Call them sun glasses. 

Neptune, the 8th and farthest planet in our solar system  is 30.5 AU's from the sun, so just to get out of our neighborhood you would have to drive that Chevette at 70 miles and hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for 5,369 years to get to Neptune.  And that would just get you to the house next door, speaking universally. 

The nearest star to our own sun, in other words the house next door, is Proxima Centuri (above, in the red triangle), which is 15, 300 AU from our sun. That means it would take you, at 70 miles an hour,  two million, six hundred ninety-two thousand, eight hundred years to drive there. And at 30 miles to the gallon, that would be a very expensive trip for a Chevette.

Of course, the assumption is that aliens have warp-drive, or hyperdrive or star-drive or can "fold space", which allows then to travel faster than the speed of light. I guess, on a Saturday night future human teenagers will just zip down to the McDonald's on Proxima Centuri to hang out.

 And I wish that were true, I really do. I am a big Star Strek/Star Wars fan. (Dr. Crusher was the MLF. of my 30's ) But it ain't gonna happen, folks.

Let's say you wanted to build an intersellar Chevette. I would suggest a few style changes, just because. But even if you kept the classic hatch-back earth size, that car weighs about 2,000 pounds. So, just to get that hatchback into orbit would take 57,000 pounds of thrust, or a 28.5 to one ratio of thrust to weight. Now that ratio drops quickly the further you get from the center of the earth. But as you go faster the ratio starts to go back up, and quickly, because - and hold on to your hat here – ...

Fueling up your 2,000 pound Chevette to reach the speed of light would require 69 billion, 192 million pounds of thrust... except, as you go faster, the Chevette gets heavier. Which means you need more thrust, leading to more mass, requiring more thrust, making more weight, requiring more thrust, etc. ad nauseum. 

That's because the amount of additional thrust required to go even one millionth of a mile per hour faster is always squared, (E=mc2) until the additional thrust required to go even one millionth of mile an hour faster is infinite. That means that the last little bit of energy required to go from 175, 999 and 9/10ths miles per second to 176,000 miles per second - aka 300,000,000 meters per second - would require you to convert all matter in the universe into energy - including your Chevette.  Relatively speaking,  you can not get to the speed of light unless you start out as light. 

Of course, science fiction writers envision ways of changing the rules of the game, by warping space, or using a convenient worm hole. Except you might as well say going down the worm hole with Alice will get you to Proxima Centuri in five minutes flat. It might. But nobody has ever actually seen a worm hole. Or designed a workable a warp drive.

Let me, as a male, explain it this way. The speed of light is like a gentleman's club where friendly beautiful naked woman gyrate on your lap. But just to get in the club requires you to hand over all your credit cards. And without a credit card, the women will no longer gyrate within  a hundred feet of you. 

Just getting into a worm hole requires you to get squished flat in a gravity field, after you have been  bombarded with enough radiation to make you transparent - for the fraction of second before you are disassembled into your individual atoms.  Can I prove that? Aha!. I don't need to. I'm not the one claiming there is a magical way of getting something for nothing out of the universe. You might was well ask a Republican for a affordable health insurance.

Is there life on other planets? Of course there is. On this planet there is life crowded around 700 degree thermal vents, in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean - bacteria, tubeworms (above), clams, mussels, and shrimp, These creatures never see sunlight, and find oxygen poisonous. They actually eat hydrogen and sulfur. There are even bacteria that eat acid and petroleum. On this planet. Why wouldn't there be life on other planets?

 With an estimated 6 sextillion planets in the universe (that's a 6 followed by 21 zeros), it becomes certain that there is life out there, probably everywhere. But is also certain, they have not and will not visit us because they cannot travel at the speed of light. Nobody can. It's not unlikely.  It is impossible.

 Sorry, but that's just the way it is.  Grow up and get used to it. UFO's ain't alien space ships. They are just stuff we haven't identified yet. But we will. Eventually. Be patient. Some day, Gates McFadden may even ask me for a date. It's possible. It just ain't likely.

- 30 -